1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an alternator (on-vehicle AC generator) which is mounted on an engine installed in a vehicle, and in particular, to an alternator equipped with a mechanism for setting a wiring direction of a cable to supply power to be outputted by the alternator.
2. Related Art
Most of engine-driven vehicles are generally equipped with alternators (on-vehicle AC generators), which generate power using the rotation of the engines. The alternator has a cable (output cable) connected to an on-vehicle battery and other necessary accessories, so that the alternator provides the power via the cable.
Such a structure for wiring the cable is disclosed for example by Japanese. Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-010568. In the structure of this publication, an insulator for insulating and protecting an output terminal of an alternator has been positioned by providing a main unit of the alternator with an engaging portion to establish a whirl-stop mechanism for the insulator. This positioning has prevented the insulator from rotating about an axis of the output terminal when nuts for fixing the insulator and vehicle side nuts for fixing the output terminal are tightened for fixation of the insulator.
The positioning in the conventional positioning structure, however, has limited the number of directions of an insulator to only one.
Generally, a vehicle side cable is run differently depending on individual vehicles. Insulators having directivity, i.e. having guides for determining directions for leading (wiring) cables, and having an identical shape have thus suffered from having to be newly constructed to set the guides at proper positions for the different leading directions as required by the respective vehicles.